Linked by Richard Wareham on Mon 8th Mar 2004 20:49 UTC
This essay describes the surprising results of a brief trial with a group of new computer users about the relative ease of the command line interface versus the GUIs now omnipresent in computer interfaces. It comes from practical experience I have of teaching computing to complete beginners or newbies as computer power-users often term them.
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I've noticed many of the same things, even with undergraduates in IT that I teach. Every dialog box, switch to a mouse, or unfamiliar window causes a look of surprise. I've often thought that a little bit of grounding in the CLI would do wonders for productivity, now that the vast majority of people have only ever used Windows.
The comparison between Pico and Notepad is good.
Personally, I find that working in a CLI is very productive; with a good way of multiplexing, it's nearly optimal. As it stands, having multiple terminal windows open doesn't work as well as it should, because picking the right one and swapping between them isn't easy.
Nice ideas, thank you.